craft of writing - Sacha T. Y. Fortuné

Tag: craft of writing

Hart & Cole Series

Romantic Cliffhangers: Will my story survive the “Big Chop”?

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Yeah, yeah, I know. The blog post title is misleading since I always make a big deal about the fact that “I don’t write romance. I write relationships. I write people.”

But for all intents and purposes, my Hart & Cole series is about love. It’s a lot MORE than romance, and it covers all KINDS of love, but the relationship is a driving force here.

And there is a huge aspect of ‘romance’ though I classify it more as a ‘Women’s Fiction’ genre since it doesn’t follow the usual trends of a romance.

Anyway, I’m getting off-topic! Romance or not, my concern is the fact that

(1) there is a love story of some kind, and

(2) there is a cliffhanger at the end of the book…

Chopping into bite-sized chunks

The reason I’m even worrying about this, is that it took me a LONG while to make up my mind, but I finally decided to make “Book 2” into Book 2 and Book 3.

I’d blogged about this earlier when I got a hard ‘no’ from a book blogger for my 555-page Book 1, and I realised that nowadays the length of a typical e-book is certainly a lot shorter than a traditionally-published one would be.

In fact, everything is general is getting smaller and shorter and is now available in a “digestible” format, so it’s understandable that books would be, too.

Problem is, I simply can’t cut my book down to such bare bones.

My characters have a LOT to say, and my story is long because it simply has to be.

…But while I can’t cut down, I CAN however cut it into smaller pieces.

And… well, yeah. In this case, I think I have to. I’ve been as stringent as I can with editing… and Darren’s and Luisa’s story still comes up to over 300,000 words and 775+ pages!

Yeah. No one’s ever going to buy the print version of that, unless they want a giant brick to prop open a door!

And honestly, after living in their heads for 350+ pages, I myself need a breather!

So… I made the big decision to CHOP, baby, CHOP.

 

Where & How to Chop?

Fortunately, there is a somewhat “natural” point of their story, where it made sense to chop, and it does happen near to the mid-mark — Chapter 30 out of 55, so it was nice to round those up and make it “Chapter 30” for Book 2 and “Chapter 25” for Book 3.

Also, for some reason I had always naturally provided somewhat of a mental recap in Chapter 31 (now Chapter 1 of Book 3). So it wasn’t *too* bad of a change, to split them.

It did call for some rewriting, though. I had to rewrite the last scene of “Book 2” so it seems like it’s somewhat of a conclusion-for-now, of sorts.

And as Book 3 was shorter than Book 2, for balance I made a few chapters in Book 3 a bit longer — which was fun, actually.

I threw in a MUCH longer scene for a convo with Luisa & new gal-pal Vicki (because OMG I just love Vicki, and she’s been begging me to fluff her up a bit since I’m making her wait SO long for her own story!)…

And I also did a MUCHHHH longer final scene with Darren and Nicole that made my toes curl! *eh-ehrm, a bit too much info there*…

So objectively speaking (or as objective as I can be, given that I’ve written the damn thing myself!) I don’t think the chop is HORRIBLE.

And I think it’ll benefit me in the long run, to have two books instead of one giant brick.

Yay, me.

…But what about the readers?

 

Angering the readers…?

I guess it’s fortunate that I’m not super-famous yet, and chances are that Book 3 (planned for 2 months after Book 2) might actually be released before most readers even get the chance to read Book 2.

So maybe I’m overthinking this, and it won’t matter. I haven’t sold enough books yet to have a throng of fans chasing me with pitchforks because they don’t know who ends up together!

But I did throw the question out to a few writer groups, and came back with responses at both ends of the spectrum.

My first response (which made me regret even posting it!) was…

“By ending with a cliff-hanger, you’d have pissed me off enough not to care, because I wouldn’t purchase the next one.”

Ouch.

Fortunately, he (and others like him) were in the minority and others quickly jumped in to point out:

  • Cliffhangers are the norm these days, not the exception.
  • Once you DO warn readers in the blurb, it’s generally acceptable.
  • You may not sell as much for the series until ALL the books are out, as readers have been burnt before.
  • It works fabulously if you have a short time period and a pre-order link for the next book, so you reassure them they just have to hang on a little longer.
  • You may get bad reviews if you have a cliffhanger (especially if you DIDN’T warn them), but you’ll sell better overall in the long run.
  • Once you DON’T wait TOO long, your readers will forgive you and will gladly hold on patiently and remain loyal when your next book comes out.

Phew. Okay.

Which brings me to the heart of what I was actually asking…

 

What’s “too long” for a romantic cliffhanger?

That question got responses everywhere from 6 months to a year (on the long side), 1-3 weeks (on the short side), 1-3 months (on the average side), and a few jokesters who said:

Two hours!

And…

3 days! Did anyone say 3 days yet? Is this like “The Price Is Right”?

Ha, ha. You can always trust writers to come up with the best responses! 🙂

My foray into reaching out to other writers did bring me to ‘Zon’ (the equivalent of “Google” but on Amazon Kindle) a few of them, and get an idea of their success with cliffhangers. Generally, there were negative reviews but they were more than balanced out with high ratings and gushing reviews.

So despite its iffy bad-boy rep, readers do tolerate — and some even love — that pesky cliffhanger.

 

Will my story survive the “Big Chop”?

So… I’m going with the cliffhanger. I’m going with two books, two separate entities, though I originally wrote it as one story.

I’m going with a story that feels half-baked when it winds to a close, and as a reader I’d be ripping my hair out and flinging the book at the wall.

Because, you see…

I personally hate cliffhangers, romantic or not, and prefer to have all the words available if I choose to read on.

I personally hate short books with cliffhangers, as it feels like I’ve been cheated into buying another one. (Bitch, I’m cheap!)

…But does it change things, if each book is long, like mine are? Hmmm…

…And does it change things, if I throw in a preview of what’s coming up? (I do)

…And does it change things, if I make it VERY clear in the blurb that this IS a cliffhanger?

…And does it change things, if I have the preorder link with a two-month gap in between?

Sigh.

I’m still doing, as a writer, what I would hate to have done to me, as a reader!

My proof of what’s now going to be “Book 2”

I personally still see Darren’s and Luisa’s story (and oh lordie, it’s a doozy!) as one holistic entity.

But no sane person needs that giant brick 775+ page opus; that might scare everyone away from the jump!

There are far too many good reasons to split it, than there are NOT to!

Plus… my 385-page print of what’s now going to be Book 2 is such a cute size to hold 🙂 …

*Deep breath*…

Cliffhanger, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship…

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On Writing

“Do I Need an Author Website?”

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When I saw the question, quite innocently posed on a Facebook Author group, my biggest surprise was that the responses were NOT a resounding “YES”!

To me, it was. I mean, of COURSE you need a website.

Granted, I make a living building and managing websites, so I may be a *wee* bit biased, but this one should be a no-brainer!

For any business — and, make no joke about it, being an author (particularly a self-published one) is a BUSINESS! — you need to have a website.

 

Don’t be at the mercy of other platforms

The poster’s logic was that — “Well, I have a Bookbub profile, a Goodreads profile, a Facebook page, an Instagram account… just so many things to manage! And I’m so not techy…”

Yeah, honey, I hear you… but you need to buckle up and get techy, and fast — or pay someone to do it for you.

Another argument from other posters was: “Well, I’VE never sought out an author website, not even for my favourite authors. Who goes to these things anymore, when there’s social media?”

But, even if you yourself don’t visit author websites, how do you know readers don’t? What about reviewers, filmmakers, a magazine writer looking for new talent, or even other bloggers that may be interested in linking to your site?

Sure, you have an ideal “reader” in mind, but you’re only limiting yourself.

You can’t just only put yourself where you THINK people will be. You need to put yourself in a good position for them to find you, whichever way they want to.

Ask yourself this: if Facebook or Instagram were to go belly-up tomorrow, what would happen to the following you’ve built up there?

Or, even more common lately: what if they change their algorithm (a seemingly daily habit by Facebook) and your fans can’t see your posts anymore?

Yep. A very scary, and very real possibility.

When you leave your following at the mercy of a company that has no interest in your personal success, anything can happen.

 

A website is your soapbox, your foundation

A website should be your key point of reference as a professional of any kind.

As a writer, a website should be your home on the web where your online presence can shine. It is the first assurance to your reader or possible reviewer that your work is of a high quality.

Think of your website like the foundation to a house.

It’s your homebase — a digital property you own and control, where your loyal fans gather. It’s where you direct all your traffic, where you can best sell your products the way you want to.

It’s where all roads should lead back to, regardless of the digital footprints you’ve stamped around all over the internet.

When you post a blog to your website, you can share that on your Facebook or Instagram page. When you add a chapter excerpt, you can send your fans there to collect it.

When you publish your book, a new reader that stumbled upon your website should be able to hop across to your purchase page on Amazon.

When you want to share your frustration, or give out advice to other aspiring writers, you can write something on your website and then drop a link to it on LinkedIn or your other social media sites.

A website is the one place you won’t have to categorise your book and choose where it should go.

It’s your soapbox. It’s where you stand and tell the world who you are, what you write, and why they should buy your book.

It’s the one place you get to tell your FULL story, with no limitations, the way you want it to be told.

 

Writers just want to write…

Okay, so now that we’ve established you DO need to have a website, it’s important to note that, as pointed out by this fellow blogger:

An author website has a lofty goal: it needs to not just be, but also needs to perform and respond.

It can feel like a HUGE time-suck to build all the content across a myriad of platforms, but if there’s one thing you shouldn’t sacrifice, it’s your author website.

Of course, writers just want to write.

But in today’s world, you can’t just write and put work out and hope someone buys it. You need to hone your craft — and a key part of honing your craft is ORGANISING the honing of your craft.

That’s what an author website does.

Since authors spend most of their time fine-tuning their masterpieces, they may not always put a lot of thought into their websites, which is a shame.

A website needs to fulfill your needs as a writer… you can’t just throw anything up there and hope it sticks!

 

Maximise your website potential

Outline what your goals are for your site. A few key goals for authors should be:

  • Newsletter sign-ups — I can’t stress this enough. If you launched a book to people who’ve already shown interest in your writing, your chance of them buying it will be much higher.
  • Reader magnet — this can be tied into your newsletter. Basically, when the visitor signs up, they automatically receive a free book, short story, or chapter excerpt. By giving them a reason to sign up, you’ve hooked them with a freebie and also shown them a taste of your writing so they know what to expect.
  • Author Blog — you don’t need to write an opus every day, but a few hundred words on a weekly or biweekly basis just to let people know what you’re up to and keep you top of mind. If you can’t think of anything to write yourself, here’s a handy list of ideas.
  • Work In Progress plugs — set up a page and start talking about your Work in Progress — even if it’s light years away from completion. Start talking about it from now! (I’ve been telling y’all about my Book 2, Book 3 and Book 4, even before I published Book 1!)
  • Character Platforms — these are especially useful if you have a series. Let readers know who your characters are. (You can check out all my Hart & Cole characters here.)
  • Author Interviews — useful no matter what you’ve written. Answer some FAQs and let readers know your thoughts on the book you’ve written. Why did you write it? What’s it about? (You can check out my Hart & Cole interview here.)
  • Chapter Excerpts — awesome for new and established authors, to show readers what’s coming up (Book 1’s first 2 chapters available here).
  • Contact info — make yourself available to your readers. Add links or buttons to any social media sites or sites where you have an author profile. Let them know you want reviews, input, discussion, comments, anything. Just ask! (Here’s mine – feel free to connect!)
  • Your personality — who are you? You need to show yourself a bit, whether through your “About Me” or the voice of your blog. Readers want to connect with you, and establish trust before they click on “Buy”.

Tell Your Story — before you Sell Your Story.

Finally… the best part of your website is that you get to track its success.

Pop some analytics code on it, and see what pages your visitors are flocking to. Are they interested in chapter excerpts, newsletter sign-ups, video trailers?

They’re your readers. They’re your future fans.

A website lets you find out what they want — and give it to them. So, get cracking!

…And if you do need some techy help to crank out your website, just drop me a line here.

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On Writing

Size Matters… Mini-books & Millennial Brains

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“Right now, this is not the type of book I am looking to read… mostly due to the page count.”

Er… ok. It’s not an epic 2000+ page book I’ve written… but 500+ pages — most of which is dialogue, so there’s a lot of white space.

But the page count alone was my potential blogger-reviewer’s hard “no” from the jump.

…And unfortunately, it’s not something I can change at this point. 🙁

Fair enough, when I myself saw the physical proof copy I was like — yikes, that’s a little on the large side. But I’ve got larger books in my own library — both in height/width and length in terms of pages, so it didn’t scare me TOO much.

But this particular person wasn’t even looking at the physical book. She had no idea of trim size, or font size. She just saw the page number, and took a pass.

I’m wondering — worrying, rather — now, if that’s what readers may do, too.

Have I marketed myself out of the range of the average reader’s tolerance level for a novel length?

I decided to do a little research…

 

Size comparisons to popular texts

According to Amazon…

…And let’s not go into the epic novels such as the Game of Thrones, where Book 1: A Song of Ice and Fire clocks in at a whopping 864 pages.

Of course, these were all traditionally published novels where the publishing house would have had a say in the final product… and thank God no one told any of these authors, “Yeah… er, pal… you really need to just chop your story down…”

When you’ve already got a major engine running your show, you don’t have to worry too much about length.

Size is just a number, as they say. Or at the very least — you the author won’t need to worry; someone else will do that for you!

However, when it comes to the independent self-published authors, and ebooks, it’s a whole different story.

 

Ebook – short by nature?

According to an article on The Huffington Post:

The cold fact is, ebooks by definition are cheap, and however many words you write, you will only be able to charge a small amount for it online. There is little point in writing a door-stopping 200,000-word opus, if you can only charge $2.99 for it.

Rather than spending a year or more producing one full-length title, it may be better to spend that time writing a sequence of three or four shorter eBooks of, say, 20,000 words each. In marketing terms, publishing four times in a year is better than publishing just once.

So if you do want to dive head-first into self-publishing your work as an e-book, it’s in your best interest to “think small”.

In fact, “thinking small” is precisely how Amazon pushes it, as the printing cost gets astronomical if your book is thick. Check Kindle Direct Publishing costs here.

…But my stories didn’t have ebooks or the millennial generation in mind, when I started writing them…

…And now I have to retro-fit to suit?

Rookie publishing mistake… maybe.

 

Self-publishing and the size conundrum

When you self-publish (or any kind of publishing, really), as this article on MagnoliaMediaNetwork points out, it’s obvious that:

The longer your book, the more expensive it is to produce. A book that costs more to produce must sell more copies before it becomes profitable.

So, while a larger book justifies a larger retail price, as an indie author/publisher, that’s unfortunately not how it works. You have to consider your reader’s attention span and willingness to:

(1) Read a long book

(2) Pay a buck or two extra for a longer book

Unfortunately, this is the one time that it pays to be smaller.

I tossed out the question to some of my new comrades on various Facebook writer groups, and got a range of responses.

While, of course, in theory the number of pages doesn’t really matter; it should be more about the content… in reality, some of them admitted that most of the books they’ve read as ebooks were about 150-200 pages.

Yikes… I’m still getting a feel of the characters by then! Nothing’s happened yet!

In terms of pacing, I myself prefer to feel like I’m invested in these characters I’m reading about, before their entire life changes in Chapter 2!

 

Write till the muse says stop!

Generally, I write until the story feels finished, then tighten up where I can, but apparently that’s just not the way to do it in today’s world.

A fellow author admitted she started each book as an independent work, and ended up with two trilogies! She felt “forced” by modern-day guidelines to chop her work up for the best market-ready approach.

Hmm… should I do this too?

Okay, I’m not in this for the money. I know this.

I’m in this to share my stories, to share my characters, and to fall in love with them all over again when others get to know them.

I don’t expect to become a huge success overnight. Maybe that may not happen at all. And that’s okay.

But if my readers — some of which, of course, will be millennials (and I myself am one!) — don’t want to even read the book because it’s too long… Houston, I think we have a problem.

Well, the cat’s out of the bag with Book 1, and I don’t want to cry over that split milk.

I already know Book 2 is longer than Book 1, and had enough tears over cutting down one of my favourite characters!!!

Maybe I can chop Book 2 up. ***Oh, the horror!***

BUT… does that mean I get to rebuild/re-flesh-out Lee? ***YAY!!!***

(But then I’ll end up with two long books for “Book 2″… lol…)

…And I’ll need to stop calling it “Book 2″… it’ll be Book 2 & 3… though to ME it’s still one story, Darren and Luisa’s story. But to everyone else, it’ll be separate entities…

Oh, and I’ll need another book cover. And another name. OMG!

For now, it’s just a thought. But having all these thoughts means… back to the editorial board… 🙁

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On Writing

Writers: when you read, do you leave bad reviews?

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The question was eating me alive. So, I posted it on several of the Writers’ groups I had recently joined.

Within minutes, my phone was plinging like it was having a seizure.

Responses poured in from all corners of the globe — across the many groups, members amount to 90,000+ writers, and 2000+ of them were leaping and squabbling over each other to share their opinions!

Mind you, this isn’t a “Work In Progress” and no one specifically asked you to be a “beta reader”. Maybe Amazon just gave you a nudge and said “Hey, what did you think of this book?”

You’re a writer. You hated it. Should you tell the world?

 

If you can’t say anything nice…

One recurring theme, and one I wholeheartedly agree with, is:

Acts of creation take such courage, that by and large, I am hesitant to be publicly critical.

Of course, as a wise member pointed out:

If someone wants to be an author, they can’t be all…. ‘Oh here’s my baby. You need to pay your hard-earned money to read it. But if it’s awful, don’t hurt my feeeelings. Waaaa!’

And another guy was taking no prisoners:

I sharpen my blades and charge in with a lunge to the jugular and leave them bleeding in a pool of hard love.

448 comments — and this was just one group, out of several! And such a wide range of responses…

He was adamant he would want the criticism himself; after all: how can a writer expect to improve their craft if they aren’t given honest feedback?

However, is a public forum, such as the official Amazon book page, the right place for it?

Some opted for trying to get in touch with the writer to share their thoughts.

Others said there was no point: unsolicited peer feedback may rub some writers the wrong way; and also the story is done, there’s no putting the cat back into the bag.

The dilemma is… as a writer, you know what it takes to bleed a story out of you; so is it really necessary to plop a hot mess on your fellow man’s/woman’s parade?

As one member, who runs a book review blog, said:

I have to kiss a dozen frogs before I get a princess… but I just prefer not to kiss and tell.

 

Was it unreadable… or just unlikable, for me?

Almost everyone seemed to agree that you must separate the physical and emotional.

Physically, a book needs to have a plot, sentences that make sense, good grammar and spelling, and something to work with…

Being boring is one thing; being unreadable is another.

Emotionally, quite simply — not everyone is going to connect with every story.

So, while most would holler (whether privately or publicly) — “Hey, straighten up and fly right!” to ensure this writer doesn’t give the profession a bad name, it’s a different story when it comes to the gut reaction of a fairly-written piece of work you just didn’t like.

As one writer pointed out, reading is a “to each his own” situation:

Reviewers are like witnesses to a murder; it has been scientifically documented that they don’t know what they’re talking about because they don’t know what they saw (read).

This writer soon gained many insta-fans AND insta-haters!

I wasn’t surprised to see the many, MANY references to the “Twilight” series, and to what one member called “50 Shades of Stockholm Syndrome” 🙂 ??? “I honestly couldn’t get past the first 10 pages, and I tried. I really, really tried.”

Still, these polarising texts made shitloads of money, despite being critically panned by readers and fellow writers alike.

So somebody — lots of somebodies, in fact! — were insta-fans.

Just because you don’t like it, it doesn’t mean others won’t.

So yes, as writers, we all have to have a thick skin; but as the saying goes, opinions are like a**holes — we all have one.

Maybe it just wasn’t your cup of tea, that’s all…

 

Loyalty to the Reader, or to the Profession?

And then, there’s the valid point that in this instance you put on your “Reader” hat, not your “Writer” hat.

One writer argues: “Me being an author shouldn’t come into my review. I am reviewing as someone who has read the book and is a consumer. It is not unprofessional at all.”

It’s understood that as a writer, critical reviews are part of the deal.

You can’t be a writer if you refuse to listen to your audience.

And, here’s the thing: there are also WRITERS in your audience.

At the same time, writing can be a very singular, isolating profession.

“Author” simply doesn’t have the same rules as almost every other profession whereby it’s understood the mud-slinging will come back to hit you in the face (rapper-beefs, anyone?!).

Your bottom line isn’t affected by this writer’s novel that didn’t move you. If you’re not a fan, you can quietly be “not a fan”!

As a writer, you see…

…All we have are our words.

We can, but should we really attack our own?

Weigh the nasty vs. the popularity…?

Another theme that popped up in response to my hot-button topic was the popularity of the writer, and the stage at which negative feedback is given.

It’s one thing to review someone who already has a huge following. Your nasty review isn’t taking a penny away from E. L. James or Stephenie Meyer.

Stephen King was NOT a fan… but, so what?Stephen King, one of my own personal favourite writers, wrote witheringly and scathingly of the Twilight series. Many agreed with him… but hey, as SK himself says:

You can be a terrible writer… and still be successful.

But what about the newbie independent self-published authors, who work a million times harder to scrape their soul into their work and then painstakingly shop it around?

Stephen King was NOT a fan… but, so what?

For an emerging author, your bad review — however “constructive” you think it is — can discourage them entirely, not to mention massively daunt their sales.

It seems that a lot of writers, especially indie writers, are uncomfortable messing with another indie writer’s money. Karma’s a bitch, right? Better safe than sorry…

Still, reviews are a form of social proof, and we’re more likely to buy something with a ton of reviews  — even bad reviews — than we are to try something no one else has bothered to try.

It just remains to be seen whether writers think they have an objective place where they can wear both hats, or if being a writer himself/herself has tainted the lens when they read a book.

As one writer argues:

“I’m not saying NOBODY should give bad reviews; I’m just saying: as writers ourselves, maybe we should just stay out of it.”

Or, as someone compared it:

Would you yell at a co-worker in front of a client?

 

If you do it, do it with love…

At the end of the day, a book isn’t like a regular consumer product on Amazon; it is more opinion-based, so you don’t always need to be purposefully cruel under the guise of being kind (at least not in public)!

Saying nothing at all may be your choice so as not to hurt anyone, but it also means you are choosing to not help anyone.

So, writers, if you do decide to switch hats and bang out a review for something that ruffled you the wrong way…

Be honest, but kind and constructive.

Think:

How would you like someone to phrase it if it was a review for your book? What can you commend, instead of just rip apart? How would their phrasing it help you to improve?

If the author is worthy of the label, he or she should be able to spin that bitter lemonade into something amazing, later on.

And assuming the writer hasn’t produced UTTER trash, his/her fan base will rise up one day and outweigh the negative reviews.

So… guys… anyone want to leave me a review?

Hop on over to Amazon…

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